Year: 2010

LOS ANGELES — An NHL team with a free night here on New Year’s Eve sounds like it has the potential for some serious party-like behavior.

But, no, say two of the handful of Sharks who showed up for an extremely optional afternoon practice at the Toyota Sports Center, not tonight.

Not when there’s a game tomorrow. Especially a game against the division rival that just humbled you six days earlier.

“We’ll just get together and have dinner and be in early,” Jamie McGinn said. “The Kings kind of embarrassed us at home after Christmas so we have big job to do tomorrow and need to be ready to go.

“It doesn’t matter if we miss a couple of NewYear’s Eves here and there,” he added.

New Year’s Eve does bring back some fun family memories for the 22-year-old Sharks left wing.

“Growing up, my parents would rent out the local hockey rink,” he said. “There’s a banquet hall above the rink and I’m sure we had 25-to-30 families every New Year’s. Parents and kids. We’d all be skating around and it w as a nice tradition we used to do.”

CHICAGO — Sorry for the disappearing act. Really had nothing to say (I know, when has that stopped me) and ran out of pre-game time to say it.

Now, print edition stories filed and back at the hotel, a chance to throw a little light on a strange, strange game that saw the Sharks cleverly avoid the opportunity to blow a third-period lead by blowing one in the second period — and then skating away with the two points in the end.

As improbable a 5-3 victory over the Blackhawks as one could imagine and one that really just illustrates how both teams are, how shall I say this? NOT the teams that faced each other in the playoffs last year.

My hope afterward was to get a sense of how they stayed the course despite those two Chicago goals in the final 22.9 seconds of the second period. Much of that is in the print edition story, but I figure I owe you one so we’ll repeat some of that here.

The answers I got were a little contradictory — Joe Thornton, for example, stressed how everybody stayed positive. Meanwhile, Dan Boyle said that was the case — but only after “a few f-bombs for about a minute.”

And after hearing what Todd McLellan had to say, I can see how both could be accurate.

“We all left the bench extremely frustrated and we couldn’t enter the third playing that way, so we talked about it,” McLellan said. “We mentioned that players were getting tested for whatever reason and we needed to man up and get out there and try to find a way to overcome it.”

ST. PAUL, Minn. — After a game like that one, the beat writer gravitates to the guys who have letters on their jerseys. They’re the titular team leaders so, in the great Desi Arnaz tradition, you go after them because they have some ‘splainin’ to do, Lucy.

But after talking with Ryane Clowe and Joe Thornton and Dan Boyle, there was Logan Couture, just sitting there, a blank expression on his face. All the other players had hit the showers by that point, but there was Couture, still in front of his stall — seemingly dumbfounded by what had just taken place as the Sharks blew yet another third-period lead, giving up three unanswered goals and losing 5-3 to the offensively deprived Minnesota Wild.

(If you missed it, the Wild were 0-13-1 this season after trailing at the end of two periods. Until Wednesday night.)

So you approach Couture. Some of what he had to say appears in the print edition story for the Thursday paper. But here’s the full text.

“There’s really no explanation for that. It’s the third or fourth time it’s happened this year. Good teams don’t do that. That’s something we’re going to need to fix.

“It seems to happen to us. We just go to sleep for five minutes and they popped three on us. It’s hard to come back there. I wish we could do those 20 minutes over again.

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Brandon Mashinter is here for his first NHL game tonight. Tommy Wingels is en route to play in his third.

And it will be Antero Niittymaki in goal against the Minnesota Wild.

That’s the basic update from this morning’s skate as the Sharks try to erase the memory of that 4-0 hosing by the Los Angeles Kings with a better effort in the State of Hockey.

The 6-foot-4, 235-pound Mashinter said getting out of the Boston airport in the wake of that East Coast blizzard wasn’t a big problem, though things were pretty busy there.

“They got me right in and the flight was delayed a little bit because of luggage, but other than that it was pretty easy,” Mashinter said.

“I’m excited. I got the call yesterday after practice and my heart got pumping a little bit,” said Mashinter, a power forward with 15 points and 64 penalty minutes in 31 games with Worcester this season.

Mashinter said he expects to be nervous at the start, then quickly get past that.

Look for at least one forward to be getting the call-up from Worcester in the next 24 hours as injuries and the flu are creating lineup problems for the Sharks.

Joe Pavelski (lower body) and Dany Heatley (illness) didn’t skate this morning and it looks as if Pavelski might not be on the flight that leaves San Jose for Minnesota in an hour or two. Torrey Mitchell won’t be on the trip either, but Heatley is expected to travel and ideally will be out there against the Wild tomorrow night.

Exactly who is coming from Worcester remains a bit of an uncertainty until GM Doug Wilson and Coach Todd McLellan get a better idea on Heatley’s availability. And there is also that little matter of getting players out of New England at a time when airports aren’t running smoothly and flight have been canceled right and left for the last day or so.

A few other matters worth mentioning:

****Wilson won’t be on the first leg of this trip, choosing instead to attend the funeral tomorrow in Sausalito for Worcester Coach Roy Sommer’s father, Harold, who died at 85. Wilson will rejoin the team, probably in Chicago, before heading to the World Junior Championships in Buffalo.

Not a whole lot to add to the print edition coverage (see link at right). Suffice to say that the Sharks were justifiably down on themselves after a performance that lacked effort or work ethic, depending on which player was doing the talking.

But the one thing that didn’t make the story that probably should have was Todd McLellan’s assessment of Antti Niemi’s showing, maybe a bit more critical than I might have expected, all things considered.

Here’s what McLellan had to say:

“Without him it could have been 4-0 in the first. I thought he did a very good job for 40 minutes and then in the last period he kind of played like the rest of us.

” There were a couple he’d like to have back, but he certainly got us to that point. At the end of the night, if you’re going to award any of our players a star, it’d probably go to him.

“And yet he didn’t have it in the third.”

*****Covering practice tomorrow, then racing to the airport for flights that get me to Minnesota through Phoenix — and delighted that the Boston trip comes in February and not now. If there’s news, I’ll figure out a way to get something posted pronto. If not, it may be another day before I’m back here.

UPDATE: Don’t look for Justin Braun at defense OR forward tonight. Todd McLellan elected to go with Derek Joslin as his seventh defenseman and Braun is a healthy scratch. END UPDATE

Justin Braun provided this morning’s cloak-and-dagger skullduggery.

With Torrey Mitchell out against Los Angeles tonight with a lower body injury that nobody will talk about, the rookie defenseman wore a forward’s jersey during the morning skate and skated alongside Scott Nichol and Jamal Mayers.

But afterward, Todd McLellan said he doesn’t plan to use Braun up front tonight.

“We’re not going to confuse a young player like that,” McLellan said. “As we went through the skate today, we had to fill in some spots. He’s very comfortable wearing black on a regular basis and he’ll continue to.”

Black is the color jersey that defensemen wear during practices. Braun was wearing teal — designating a forward on the third or fourth lines.

After the skate, he said he wasn’t sure what McLellan’s plans are for tonight — though with no help coming from Worcester and John McCarthy still not practicing, it seems pretty obvious the plan is to go with seven defensemen in some form or the other.

“They haven’t told me much,” Braun said. “I’ll try to think of all the forward things I can think of, but I’ve got to be ready to play D.”

Torrey Mitchell didn’t skate today and won’t be in the lineup tomorrow night against the Los Angeles Kings because of a lower body injury.

That’s the top headline from a late in the day skate that officially ended the Sharks’ holiday break this afternoon.

Mitchell was one of two players not on the ice. Dan Boyle was the other, but Todd McLellan said that was a matter of the defenseman being “under the weather and the extra day (off) won’t hurt him.”

Barring a worsening of those always unpopular flu-like symptoms, sounds as if Boyle should be out there against the Kings.

Mitchell played only nine shifts for a total of 5:32 in Thursday night’s 4-1 victory over the Phoenix Coyotes. He missed long stretches of the game at a time, but did skate as late as eight minutes into the third period.

Yeah, I’m about to sign off for a couple days, too. Just like the NHL. But I figure one last, quick post is in order before I disappear. So here goes.

One gift the Sharks probably weren’t counting on before they went on their current streak that has seen them pick up eight points in the last eight nights:

Home ice advantage in the first round if the playoffs were to begin today.

OK, I know they’ve played two games more than the Kings. But the regular season really doesn’t end tonight so we’re already bending reality here. That said, the Sharks do now have 43 points and trail only three teams in the Western Conference.

Oh, and that four-game winning streak is currently the longest active one in the NHL.

But enough about hockey.

Because Todd McLellan basically ordered his players not to think about the game for the next 48 hours, stressing the ultimate importance of family.

So I had to ask: Will McLellan be able to not think about hockey for the next two days?

Santa McLellan has brought an early gift for Antti Niemi: Tonight’s start against the Phoenix Coyotes after sitting out the past three games, all victories with Antero Niittymaki in nets.

I thought it might have had something to do with the Christmas break and the fact the Sharks won’t be playing again until Monday, but McLellan said that wasn’t the case.

“We made a decision and we’re going with it,” the coach said.

****After one sort of false start, look for Douglas Murray to be in action tonight against the Coyotes. He skated alongside Dan Boyle in drills and was one of the first off the ice at the morning skate.

And if anyone needed more evidence, McLellan provided it: “He should be ready to go. It’ll be something I address with him and the training staff, but we expect him to play.”

If that’s the case, look for Justin Braun and Derek Joslin to become the odd-men-out.